In the following discussion certain articles, methods, patents, and publications may be described for background and introductory purposes. Nothing contained herein is to be construed as an “admission” of prior art. Applicant expressly reserves the right to demonstrate, where appropriate, that the articles and methods referenced herein do not constitute prior art under the applicable statutory provisions.
Custom imprinted promotional materials represent a large and dynamic segment of the advertising industry. Many companies choose to spend a portion of their advertising budgets each year on purchasing and distributing promotional items that have been imprinted with company logos or other customer designated text or images. This form of advertising provides many benefits relative to other forms of promotion. Many custom imprinted promotional items are both durable in nature and perform some useful function. These items, therefore, stay in the hands of potential customers much longer than other forms of advertising and remind them of the company whose logo and/or message are printed thereon. Custom imprinted promotional materials can also generate traffic and/or excitement for a new product or business. A business attending a tradeshow or opening a new storefront, for example, might give away a unique or desirable promotional item with its logo imprinted thereon to encourage attendees to visit its booth or new location. These are but a few of the many reasons custom imprinted promotional materials are popular.
The range of products that can be custom imprinted is virtually limitless. Every sort of product including simple paper goods, textiles, product samples, tools, electronic devices, etc. are available with custom imprinted promotional messages on them. The foregoing list is, of course, only a sample of the many custom imprinted promotional items available and is not intended as an exhaustive list. The wide range of products available for custom imprinting, however, can create problems for those performing this custom imprinting work.
Each individual product typically has a unique, predefined printable surface area that is constrained by the size/geometry of the product to be imprinted and the printing method/apparatus used, among other constraints. Because the available printing area varies with the product to be imprinted, it is necessary to have a method for assessing whether the space available on any particular product is adequate for the image(s) and/or text to be imprinted thereon. This assessment is highly dependant upon the nature and design of the image(s) and/or text supplied. For example, for any given printing equipment and technique there is some minimum print size for an image or text. Attempting to print text or images that are too small will result in substandard print quality, possibly rendering the image illegible and/or unintelligible. Similarly, there exists some minimum separation that must be maintained between printed elements to maintain the quality and legibility of the printed image and/or text. Therefore, if the image supplied contains printed elements that are too close to one another, the final printed product will be of poor quality.
Traditionally, custom printing businesses maintain large graphic arts departments to evaluate the positive and negative line weights of submitted artwork and/or text to determine whether it is suitable for printing on a particular product. This is time consuming and costly as a trained human must perform the measurements and calculations by hand. It is therefore one objective of certain embodiments of the invention to provide a means of quickly evaluating the positive and negative line weights of an image or collection of images. It is another objective of certain embodiments of the present invention to provide a means of automating such a process such that human intervention and/or judgment is not necessary in calculating positive or negative line weights. It is yet another objective of certain embodiments of this invention to provide an automated means for checking to see whether the negative or positive line weights of an image or collection of images violates the minimum thresholds for printing on a selected object and/or by a particular method. Yet another objective is to provide a method and apparatus for permitting customers to configure custom printed products without oversight by a graphic artist or other trained professional and ensure that the final product will meet customer expectations and quality standards.